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Jul 24 2008

Google’s launches new ‘FREE tool’, ‘KNOL’

Shoaib Hashmi 

Google_new_feature_Knol

Last year in December, Google spread the word regarding the new free tool ‘Knol’. Knols are actually reliable articles about particular subjects which are written by people who have knowledge about those topics. Now the tool is open for everyone.

It is a fact that the online world contains a wide range of information, but not all the significant information is present on the web. A lot of people have tremendous amount of information  but it is limited to them only. If they can put their precious thoughts online, a huge range of people will benefit from it. The new tool will encourage such people to contribute their knowledge on the web and make it available for others.

Knol_share_knowledge The main theory behind this tool is authorship. Each and every Knol will contain atleast an author who will be able to place his/her name with the content. One good thing with this feature is that a single topic can have multiple authors.

Google’s software engineer Michael McNally and Product Manager Credit Dupont, who broke the news, said:

With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call “moderated collaboration.” With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!

According to Google, Knol incorporates very strong community tools which lets interaction between authors and readers in various modes. Also the tool allows you to comment, rate or write a review. A knol may contain AdSense ads. If someone decides to put up ads, revenue share for those ad placements will be given to the author by Google.

Furthermore Google has reached an agreement with the New Yorker magazine. Regarding the agreement, Google’s official blog reads:

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker’s extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

The new feature seems interesting, lets see how much authors get benefit from it.

Google company profile provided by TradeVibes

Comments
  1. moa3333 Says:

    This is a wikihowto killer. It cannot compete with Wikipedia because its structure is fundamentally different.

    http://fr.howto.wikia.com/wiki/Discuter:Accueil#Knol_and_wikihowto.27s_objects

  2. Imran Hussain Says:

    Wikipedia can’t be competed against as it is like a charitable knowledge crowd sourced encyclopedia with no financial gains for anyone. It’s very hard to compete with Wikipedia because of this

  3. MOin Says:

    this service has a lot of potential to do good in future and for sure it is going to kill wiki first reason there is google behind this second its more customize able and less cluttered and more squidoo like thing :D

  4. BlogsDNA Says:

    i dont see this knol is going to harm wikipdia in any way. wiki is and will be favorite .just because Wki is publicly Managed not like Domainted by single or group of authors as in knol.

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